Towards a denotational semantics for the rho-calculus
Abstract
The rho-calculus, also called rewriting calculus, provides an integration of rewriting and lambda-calculus in which, we can abstract on arbitraty patterns. Up to now, this formalism has been studied only from the perspective of tis operational semantics. This paper is a first attempt to propose a Scott-style semantics for this formalism. After introducing the rho-calculus we define a notion of rho-model in the category of Scott domains, and prove the soudness of the reduction rules w.r.t. this notion of rho-model. We then show that any universal domain D = D -> D with a top element (including the Scott's historical D_infinity) can be given the structure of rho-model by interpreting the structure construction of the rho-calculus by binary sup. From this, we deduce that the full aCI-theory of the rho-calculus is conservative w.r.t. the beta-eta theory for normalisable lambda-terms.